IPCC Second Assessment Report
intergovernmental report on climate change
The Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 1995, is an assessment of the then available scientific and socio-economic information on climate change. The report was split into four parts: a synthesis to help interpret UNFCCC article 2, The Science of Climate Change (Working Group I), Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change (WG II), Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change (WG III). Each of the last three parts was completed by a separate Working Group (WG), and each has a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) that represents a consensus of national representatives.
The SPM of the WG I report contains the following statements: Greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to increase; anthropogenic aerosols tend to produce negative radiative forcings; climate has changed over the past century (air temperature has increased by between 0.3 and 0.6 °C since the late 19th century; this estimate has not significantly changed since the 1990 report); The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate (considerable progress since the 1990 report in distinguishing between natural and anthropogenic influences on climate, because of: including aerosols; coupled models; pattern-based studies). Climate is expected to continue to change in the future (increasing realism of simulations increases confidence; important uncertainties remain but are taken into account in the range of model projections). Finally, the report stated that there were still many uncertainties (estimates of future emissions and biogeochemical cycling; models; instrument data for model testing, assessment of variability, and detection studies).
Overview
The Second Assessment Report, titled Climate Change 1995, consists of reports from each of the three Working Groups, and a Synthesis Report:
Report of Working Group I: The Science of Climate Change (IPCC SAR WG1 1995).
Report of Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analyses (IPCC SAR WG2 1995).
Report of Working Group III: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change (IPCC SAR WG3 1995).
The "Full Report", consisting of Synthesis of Scientific-Technical Information Relevant to Interpreting Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Summaries for Policymakers from the three Working Group reports (IPCC SAR SYR 1995).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “IPCC Second Assessment Report” is intergovernmental report on climate change. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through IPCC, Second and Assessment, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “intergovernmental report on climate change” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q233691. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “IPCC Second Assessment Report” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.